The Tactile Muse

I am poised at a fork in my writing road: I have plotted a sequel to A Sketch in Time, which will take place mostly during the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, and I have planned a massive revision of my first novel, This Powerful Rhyme. The revision will involve getting rid of one of the protagonists and will thus really be a complete rewriting on blank pages rather than a tinkering of pages already written. I feel drawn to both of these projects, and I expect I will tackle both in good time, but for now, I am standing at that fork, trying to decide which way to go.

This decision prompts me to think about what motivates me to write. What is my muse? The answer surprises me a little. As a professor of literature, I would think words would be my muse. Other people's lovely words that brew on the page into a solution that is more than words and more than pages. And it's true that other people's words inspire me and give me strength and direction in my life, but they do not, funnily enough, stir me to write.

What stirs me to write is the mundane feel of things in my hands. This is not a metaphor. I mean the actual feel of things in my hands, which somehow prompts me to tell stories about those things. In stories, I put these things in other people's hands, but the things are real, and there is something in the reality of them, the feel of them that leads me to write.

I've been messing around with sequel ideas since November when I finished my first draft of A Sketch in Time. I've been making notes, thinking through scenarios, problems with the plot, challenges for the characters, etc., but the story didn't click. The story finally clicked the other day when I opened an antique desk imported from Barcelona. I was taking out a picture that I'd stored inside. To open the desk, I had to use a heavy iron key that struggled into place and then made a satisfying clack as it turned and allowed me to open the door. The feel of the key in my hand, the feel of the lock shifting, the feel of the heavy door falling open in my hand. All of those feelings transported me, and, like the lock, I felt the story clack into place. The desk will be in the sequel. It will be important, but it will not be the most important thing to the story. Yet, it may be the most important thing to me, the touchstone, the muse. When the story sticks and won't come out, I can literally turn the key and trigger my tactile muse.

For This Powerful Rhyme, there is a cupboard in a bedroom. It's door used to be stuck shut, and that was the beginning of that story. Now the door opens, but I can shut the cupboard and feel it's small, odd knob between my fingers, and I think I'll remember how it felt when that door wouldn't open and how the story that came out of the fastness of that cupboard presented itself.

So, I've learned tha I write inspired by the tactile muse. But I still don't know which fork to take. Perhaps I should open both doors, the one with its iron key and the other with is small knob and see which door demands a story from me.